Small Press Recommendations: New Year's Eve!

Today’s small press picks, the last ones of this holiday season, come from the great Wred Fright. I met Wred at the Cleveland reading that Dave Hoenigman set up at Mac’s Backs. A few months later he was embarking (with Crazy Carl Robinson) on his Underground Literary America Tour and asked me to be the local reader for his stop in Pittsburgh. Both Wred and Carl were members at the time of the Underground Literary Alliance. If you don’t know about the ULA, they were a group of underground writers and zinesters (many from the Rust Belt and from the working class) who protested the hypocrisy and monopoly of the New York literati, especially those from families of wealth and privilege. You can read their original protest statement from October 2000 here and more about their creative activism here.

Wred’s a really generous spirit and was a fun friend to do a reading with. We got a big crowd for the event, Crazy Carl’s reading was actually one of the craziest performances I’ve ever seen, and Wred read from his hilarious novel chronicling a young Ohio band, The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus. His novel was originally serialized as a zine; Wred also did his graduate research on zines, and I interviewed Wred about the intersection of academia, libraries, and zines here: http://www.myspace.com/ldpdistro/blog/381463257

*****

1. The Hanging Gardens Of Split Rock, Mike Faloon (Gorsky Press, 2010)

2. The Journeymen, James Jay (Gorsky Press, 2010)

3. Strangers In America, Erika Meyers (Bottom Dog Press, 2010)

Recommended by
Wred Fright, author of The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus (Out Your Backdoor, 2006)
http://www.wredfright.com

*****

Speaking of James Jay, I still have to flip a coin and see who wins the free copy of The Journeymen: Margaret Bashaar or Ron Kolm. Stay tuned for those results as well as more guest reviews and publisher giveaways.